1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to broadcast networks and, more particularly, a receiver for a broadcast network that is remotely controlled by a central controller and recasts broadcast programs over a computer network.
2. Related Art
Broadcasts over satellites to a satellite receiver, also known as an integrated receiver and decoder (IRD), generally use a classical transmission stream, such as a Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) in which MPEG program stream data are multiplexed together in 188 byte transport stream packets which are identified by particular packet identification (PID) numbers. In traditional broadcast networks, it has been known to remotely control satellite receivers from a central control facility, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,985,895. The current systems also temporarily insert local content over live content and later return to the live content.
Terrestrial digitized video and audio are normally transported over a computer network as a real time stream of data packets. For computer networks, the MPEG program stream data can be packaged into the data packets and transmitted under a multicast address and a port number of the user's choice.
To bridge broadcast networks with computer networks, multi-protocol encapsulators (MPE) were developed which allow the computer network data packets to be transmitted over a DVB satellite feed. An “IP satellite receiver” can then extract the original data packet from the satellite feed and route it to a local area network. Therefore, such an IP satellite receiver merely decodes the satellite transmission and pushes the MPE data onto the computer network. The multicasting addresses are set at the uplink facility and the IP satellite receiver does not have the capability to recombine the same program content with different addresses. Additionally, to provide the programs to computers and other media devices over the computer network, broadcast networks already transmitting programs in the existing classical transmission stream required transmitting additional channels of an MPE formatted stream, even though programs contain identical program content, i.e., the same video and audio but in different formats. It has also been recently disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,647 that a multicast scheme can combine a satellite link with local receiving stations that distribute the data by unicasting the data.
However, in bridging satellite networks with computer networks, previous systems have failed to combine the capabilities of remotely controlled receivers with distributed recasting capabilities within the receivers. Accordingly, the previous systems have failed to insert locally stored program content into a live recasting of a broadcast signal. Additionally, the previous systems have failed to control the recasting for the receivers according to different groupings. The systems that merely push MPE data onto the computer network do not even recast the program.